


Where the Lovelight Gleams

by sugarlessgum



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Christmas, Family Bonding, Gen, Ice Skating, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, this is honestly just pure fluff, very minor backstory stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 11:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12958374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarlessgum/pseuds/sugarlessgum
Summary: This is my AFTG Exchange gift for @blurredmxnds on tumblr, who wanted to see andreil as parents





	Where the Lovelight Gleams

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of fun making this character and coming up with her backstory, and how she came to live with Andrew and Neil (almost none of which actually ended up in this story). I'd like to write more about her in the future.
> 
> Title from "I'll Be Home For Christmas"

The sun has long been set by the time they pull into the driveway, the only light coming from streetlamps and the Christmas lights strung up throughout the neighborhood. Neil steps out of the car and stretches out his aching joints. A sixteen-hour drive on snow-covered roads wasn’t ideal, but Elena is just as fond of flying as Andrew and the amount of luggage and presents they have to transport between Denver and Chicago made flying impractical.

Andrew grabs their bags out of the trunk while Neil collects the sleeping six-year-old from the backseat. Elena blinks her big, brown eyes at him slowly, then reaches her arms out in a silent request. Neil obliges, gathering her in his arms and making his way up the drive. Aaron meets them at the door.

This isn’t the first Christmas they’ve spent in Chicago. After Aaron and Katelyn’s twins were born, there was a silent agreement between the cousins that they’d spend the holidays here. It is, however, their first Christmas with Elena, which adds a whole set of responsibilities and holiday stress he and Andrew hadn’t experienced before.

Nicky and Erik had arrived hours earlier and are now gathered in the kitchen with Katelyn. Neil nods a quick greeting as he passes. After depositing his daughter in one of the guest rooms, he goes back downstairs to help Andrew unpack their car.

Once they’ve finally gotten everything settled, they join the others in the kitchen. Neil collapses into his chair and graciously accepts a mug of coffee from Katelyn.

“I still don’t see why you couldn’t just fly,” says Nicky, to which Andrew calmly gives him the finger.

 

Neil wakes the next morning to find both sets of twins in the living room. Mandy and Rebecca hover around Andrew, chattering about school and their friends and their pug while he passively sips his coffee. Both girls adore him, thanks in no small part to his resemblance to Aaron (they both called him “Daddy” until they were almost two). Even after the confused identity issue had been sorted, he’d managed to keep his title as the favorite uncle, much to the surprise of the other Foxes.

Neil kisses him good morning and attempts to steal some of his coffee. Andrew lets him get away with it at first, but he quickly shoos Neil into the kitchen to make his own.

Elena is sitting at the kitchen table with Nicky, speaking to him in slow, faltering Spanish. Her birth mother had been a native speaker but never passed the skill on to Elena. Elena confessed to them one night that her father didn’t like when they spoke Spanish in the house, so she’d never gotten the chance to learn. Neil and Andrew suggested they learn it together and Nicky had been quick to offer his help.

Neil makes himself a cup of coffee and joins them at the table, listening to Elena’s story about the cats knocking over their Christmas tree. They usually didn’t bother getting a tree for exactly this reason, but they gave in this year for Elena’s sake. She’d never really experienced Christmas outside of a few sparse presents when her mother was still alive, but that had been years ago. She had been thrilled when she found out they’d be celebrating together. So they spent the past few weeks decorating the house and wrestling the cats into Christmas sweaters. She and Neil had even tried their hand at baking holiday cookies. They turned out half-burned and lumpy, but Andrew ate nearly half the batch anyway.

Around noon, Nicky insists they go ice skating, so they bundle up the children and head out. It’s a Christmas Eve tradition that Nicky had tried to get started years ago, but it never really stuck until Mandy and Rebecca were old enough to help him pester everyone else into submission.

They split off once they reach the rink, Aaron and Katelyn helping their girls into their skates while Nicky and Erik made slow circles around the rink, hands entwined. Andrew helps Elena lace up her skates then sends her off to the rink with Neil, opting to stay on the sidelines with a cup of hot chocolate instead.

Elena, who has never gone skating before, clings nervously to the railing with Neil hovering closely behind her. When Mandy and Rebecca notice her struggling, they zip to her side almost immediately. The twins were only a year older than Elena, but it hadn’t taken long for them to appoint themselves guardians of their younger cousin. It wasn’t all that surprising, considering their role models. Neil watches as they each link an arm with Elena to help her keep balance on the ice and pull her further into the rink.

After about half an hour, Neil joins Andrew on the sidelines. He relaxes into Andrew’s side but keeps a steady eye on Elena as she moves around the rink. He knew Andrew is doing the same. The group lasts another hour or so before the girls clamber out of the rink demanding ice cream.

“But it’s freezing outside!” Nicky exclaims. He turns an accusatory look at Andrew. “They get this sort of thing from you.”

“I know.” To Neil’s trained ears, he sounds almost smug.

They end up compromising with brownies and hot chocolate back at home, where they all pile into the living room to watch cheesy holiday movies that the kids picked out. Eventually, the twins start fussing over letters and cookies for Santa. Neil and Andrew had worried briefly over the Santa issue until Elena assured them that particular tradition had been spoiled for her several foster homes ago. Still, she plays along when the twins insist she help set out the cookies and milk.

“I didn’t want to ruin it for them,” she later tells Neil, her expression entirely too mature for a kindergartener. She does opt out of writing a letter though. Instead, she curls up between Andrew and Neil on the couch and quickly falls asleep, head nestled into Neil’s side, one hand clutching Andrew’s sleeve.

 

They are woken up entirely too early the next morning by a small weight shifting onto their mattress. Neil blinks his eyes open to find Elena sitting on the side of the bed, looking at him expectantly.

“Is it time for presents yet?” Neil fumbles for his phone to check the time. 7:15, definitely too early, especially considering how late they’d stayed up the night before to arrange said presents.

“Can it wait ten more minutes?” She places her hands on either side of Neil’s scarred face. She’s been fascinated with his scars since they’d met. She has her own set, remnants of her time living with her birth father. She usually takes great care to keep them covered, even now. After she moved in with them, she started asking Neil questions about where his came from and why he doesn’t hide them. Over the past few months, she’d grown slightly more comfortable with her own.

Now she sits with her hands framing Neil’s face, staring intently down at him. “Presents.”

Andrew holds a hand out to her and she climbs over Neil to settle between them.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Andrew says as she nestles under the covers. “Sleep for another fifteen minutes and we’ll take you to your favorite bakery when we get back to Denver.”

Elena agrees happily and obediently shuts her eyes. Neil doesn’t actually get more sleep after that, just settles back into his pillow and cards a hand through Elena’s hair. He is struck, not for the first time, with how fortunate he is. When Elena came to live with them this spring, he hadn’t dreamed it would be like this. He and Andrew didn’t completely know what they were doing, and she had been so withdrawn, for a while Neil had worried things wouldn’t work out. But eventually, they grew more comfortable with each other and Elena started considering their house an actual home. It was less like adding a new member to their family and more like discovering someone who was always meant to be a part of it. Now, Neil can’t imagine a life without her in it.

When he meets Andrew’s eyes from across the bed, Neil knows he’s thinking the same thing. They already have the adoption papers ready to be signed. They were just waiting to ask Elena if this is what she wants too. They bring it up later that morning after the presents have been opened and the chaos settled down.

Neil has never been happier to hear the word “yes.”


End file.
